It is necessary for a printer employing an electrophotographic technology or a multifunction apparatus employing the electrophotographic technology to (i) stably drive a scanner motor and (ii) set a temperature of a fixing device to be within a predetermined range, so as to appropriately carry out a scanning process or a printing process. For this reason, a warm-up is carried out before, for example, the printing process is carried out, so that the fixing device has a temperature in the predetermined range when the printing process is started.
However, such a warm-up causes a user to wait until the warm-up is completed. In view of this, there has been known a technique for reducing a waiting time period of a user. For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique by which in a system that transmits print data from a computer to a printing apparatus and causes the printing apparatus to carry out printing, a power-saving function control command to start a warm-up is sent from the computer to the printing apparatus when a user carries out an input operation on the computer.
Furthermore, in recent years, a multifunction apparatus has been connected to a PC (personal computer) or the like via a communication network so as to carry out various processes. Specifically, the following technique has been developed. That is, a multifunction apparatus serves as a part of a total application system in such a manner that an application that is executable on an external information processing apparatus and a function of the multifunction apparatus operate in cooperation with each other (see Patent Literature 2).
Citation List
Patent Literature 1
Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2000-218894 A (Publication Date: Aug. 8, 2000)
Patent Literature 2
Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2007-174400 A (Publication Date: Jul. 5, 2007)